


Awake

by soongtypeprincess



Category: Independence Day (1996), Independence Day: Resurgence (2016)
Genre: Angst and Tragedy, Canon Gay Relationship, Fluff, Life Partners, M/M, Romance, Science Husbands
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-27
Updated: 2016-06-27
Packaged: 2018-07-18 12:52:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,404
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7315894
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/soongtypeprincess/pseuds/soongtypeprincess
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>7/2016: I have updated and changed the story since I saw Resurgence again. Feel free to read again! :)</p><p>Dr. Brakish Okun was in a coma for twenty years.</p><p>His partner, Dr. Isaacs, visited him the entire time he was asleep.</p><p>Exactly 7300 days.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Awake

**Author's Note:**

> I DO NOT OWN THESE CHARACTERS! THEY JUST GIVE ME FEELS!
> 
> So, I had to drabble!
> 
> Posting this in the 1996 ID4 category until a Resurgence one pops up. Then, I'll move it. I just couldn't wait to write this.
> 
> Also, I hate canon. Canon sucks. I tend to ignore more of it.

After the attack on Brakish, Milton sat next to his hospital bed every night, staring at the tubes that laced the glucose bags to his husband’s beautiful hands with needles. The liquid slowly drained into him as he slept, and his breathing was almost ghostly. 

He concentrated on his work in the labs and with cleaning up around the Area 51 compound, where he would treat other injured soldiers and civilians. When that wasn't occupying his time, he would isolate himself in his office and by Brakish’s bedside. Every day, the nurses cleaned his husband’s sleeping body, changed his catheter bag, and turned him in his bed to prevent sores, and Milton would only observe them from the corner of the room. He was a skilled doctor, but all he could do was watch the nurses perform their duties. He felt helpless, angry, and useless. Milton was as numb as his husband's body.

Two years later, Brakish flat-lined.

Milton had been tacking to his wall faded Polaroids from their photo albums when he heard the dreaded sound. He yelled out to the cold room, "No...no, no, n-no! Brakish! Baby!" He ran to his partner's bed side just as a fellow doctor, who had heard the alarm at the nurses' station, thrust open the door as he called for assistance. "Code Blue!"

Milton did not hear the voice that had suddenly joined him. He held tightly to Brakish's hand, but soon felt other hands on his own shoulders. "Dr. Isaacs! Please! Make room!" a nurse's anxious voice tore into his ear. But Milton held on tightly to Brakish, as if it were the only way to keep Brakish on this earth.

"No! Please!" Milton shouted. "Brakish, stay with me!" He was finally pried away from the bed, and he could still feel the indentations on his fingers that were from Brakish's own. A nurse led him to the corridor and closed the door behind him, and once more Milton felt helpless as he watched the crowd in the room, moving swiftly with the paddles to place them on Brakish's chest. One attempt. Two attempts. Three. His body responded from the voltage but his heart refused to stir.

Milton sank to his knees, his head pounding and his heart racing.

Maybe this is what Brackish wants, he told himself. No, no! He can't do this! Baby, please…please…don’t leave me alone.

He hardly prayed anymore. With the events that had taken place, his faith had been shaken, but Milton clasped his hands together tightly and murmured an incoherent prayer. To whom? He wasn’t sure. He was sure, however, that no deity would possibly hear him through all the expletives and curses that he directed at the invaders that did this to Brackish.....to them.

“We have a pulse!” echoed a nurse’s voice.

Milton unclasped his hands and he softly laughed with relief.

After the room cleared, Milton approached the bed and carefully laid his head on Brakish’s chest. He laughed again as he heard the delicate patter of his heart. He held his partner’s hand, his fingers once again filling the indentations, saying, “You were always so stubborn.” He raised his head and ran his fingers through Brakish’s long, salt-and-pepper hair. "I'll try harder, baby. I promise."

As the years went on, Milton brought fresh flowers every few weeks to brighten up Brakish’s dreary room. He had a quiet hobby of caring for orchids, and he would bring in new ones after they had finally bloomed and show Brackish every detail.

He had a whiteboard brought in so that he could outline all the new gadgets and weapons they had acquired after the war, and he would hang blueprints up of the latest ships they found.

Most nights, after dinner, he would sit and read to him from the latest science journals, or they would watch Jeopardy, one of their favorite past times before the war. He couldn't help but remind Brakish that it was quite cute that he would get frustrated when a contestant got an answer wrong. "Not everyone is a genius, honey," Milton told him as he caressed his husband's still arm.

One night, the nurse was bringing a new catheter bag to the room, but stopped when she saw that the curtain was drawn. She quietly knocked and, when she heard no answer, slowly opened the door to find Milton at the end of the bed. "Doctor? What are you doing?" she asked.

Milton did not turn to her, but simply replied, "I'm changing a catheter." When she didn't respond, he paused in his work to turn to her and he smiled. "I am a doctor, you know?"

From that moment on, when Milton wasn't working, he was his husband’s caregiver. He massaged his arms and hands, his neck, and even performed low intensity exercises on his legs, lifting them and bending them as if he were performing aerial lunges.

One night, as Milton was enduring a troubled slumber in their new apartment, the telephone violently rang on the nightstand. Half asleep, his hand floated toward it, and he answered it. Before he could put the headset to his ear, he heard a croaking whisper coming from the receiver.

"Milty.......where...where are you? Where are you?"

It was Brakish.

Milton jumped out of bed and quickly put on his slacks. He was in such a rush that he did not notice that the telephone had never been disturbed.

He hurried along the path that led from their apartment to the hospital, and he was met by a soldier's confused expression at his reached the entrance. "Doctor? What's going on? It's late."

"Medical emergency," was all Milton could say as the soldier opened the door for him.

"I didn't hear any 'Code Blues' in there, Doc!" the soldier called after him, but Milton ignored him as he rushed to Brakish's room and darted through the door.

"Baby! I'm here! Don't worry. I--" Brakish was still in his bed, but the only thing that answered his assurances was the steady beeping of the monitors.

Milton sighed and wiped away the moisture that suddenly collected in his eyes. He shuffled himself over to the bed side and looked at his husband's still features. He and rested his head on his stomach and gently held Brackish's needle-threaded hand.

Milton had become quite skilled at hiding the sounds of his sobs.

4 Weeks later

It was going to be a sweater, but he was eager to show Brakish the progress he had made from his knitting class. With an orchid in one arm and his knitting project in his pocket, he marched into the hospital room with a big smile.

"Good morning, Brakish!" he said sweetly as he made his way to the windowsill. The machines were beeping and humming louder than usual, but Milton continued to rattle on about his new orchid.

He approached the bed, not seeing that Brakish's fingers were twitching.

“I’ve been taking a knitting class,” he told him proudly as he brought out a thick swatch of beige wool with a giant brown button on one end. He wrapped it around his husband's neck but jumped back in shock when his bloodshot eyes opened. 

Brakish suddenly sat upright, screaming at the top of his lungs. Milton grabbed his shoulders to calm him. "You're awake!" he exclaimed.

His heart frantically pounded in his throat, and he called for a nurse.

Brakish looked around, desperately. "Did we win?" Milton could only stare at him. "Where are my glasses?" Brakish whimpered. "I can't see!"

Milton reached behind the bed and picked up his glasses from the night stand. He handed them to his now alert partner, who stared at him.

Brakish's eyes were just as youthful and bright as they were 20 years ago, and many years before that when they first met.

“How long was I out?" Brakish asked as he looked his husband up and down.

"Baby, a long time!" Milton smiled in his reply.

Brakish surveyed his partner once more. "I can see that, babe..." he paused a moment "you got fat! And you're bald!"

Milton usually would have groaned and rolled his eyes, but he was too shocked and overwhelmed at what was happening.

“But…you look great,” Brakish said with a genuine smile.

Milton Isaacs leaned in and kissed his husband's bristly cheek.

Brakish Okun was awake.


End file.
